With $500k in funding, Full Fact is building two automated fact-checking tools for journalists

Political events in 2016 and 2017 have only reinforced the need for fact-checking and debunking – not just by news organisations, but also by the public, who can often feel powerless or unprepared to take on those who create and spread misinformation.

Today, Full Fact, the UK's independent fact-checking charity, announced that it has received $500,000 (£385,000) in funding from the Omidyar Network and the Open Society Foundations to build two automated fact-checking tools that will be available in 2018 to journalists and fact-checkers globally.

We spoke to Mevan Babakar, digital product and supporter communications manager at Full Fact, about how the two tools, Live and Trends, will work, and how we can lower the barriers to entry for fact-checking to avoid creating a "civic vacuum" that is detrimental to both news consumers and the industry.